Beginnings

The Astrojots webcomic has been launched. Welcome!

I'm fortunate enough to be the recipient of an STFC Public Engagement Fellowship, providing me with support to produce Astrojots whilst continuing my main job as a researcher in Planetary Science at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.

I thought it'd be great to try produce a webcomic that concentrates on planetary science and astronomy. Yes, I'm a huge fan of webcomics such as xkcd (especially strips like this and this) and phdcomics, but Astrojots will be quite different. As well as random short strips that might well be influenced by ongoing missions and new results, there will be longer strips appearing occasionally that provide more detail on a particular topic, such as space history, or a particular moon or planet. I'll try to produce material for everyone, but the strips will have different levels of complexity; some that I hope will be understandable by children under 10, others for those with a secondary school science background, and a few more advanced topics. As the collection grows, I'll provide guidance on the level of complexity, and will provide teachers with links to relevant topics in the national curriciula in the UK where I can.

The Astrojots strips are free to use for educational and personal use, so teachers, please feel free to dowload strips and print them out for your class. Please get in touch if you want to use the strips for anything else. 

I'll post Astrojots strips as often as I can, but I might go quiet occasionally if things get particularly hectic with my main job! There will also be some other Astrojots-related output too; watch this space!

Keep up-to-date on the latest strips by following @astrojots on Twitter, or follow astrojots on Facebook.